The new WNBA season opened with another milestone audience, if not quite at the level of last year’s.
Last weekend’s Wings-Fever WNBA opening weekend game averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.49 million viewers on ABC, down from Sky-Fever last year (2.70M), but still the league’s fourth-largest audience — including the playoffs and All-Star Game — since 2000.
(Note that Nielsen did not begin including out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020, only began doing so in 100 percent of markets a year ago, and is mere months into a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Those changes will generally skew historical comparisons, particularly to years prior to 2020.)
The Wings-Fever matchup featured the past three #1 picks in newcomer Azzi Fudd, teammate Paige Bueckers and the league’s best-known player Caitlin Clark, but last year’s game was a higher-profile pairing of Clark and Angel Reese — the player widely viewed as her main rival.
Despite the dip, the Wings’ win was the most-watched sporting event of last weekend outside of the NBA Playoffs and final round of the PGA Tour at Quail Hollow.
In the second half of the doubleheader, a lopsided Mercury-Aces WNBA Finals rematch averaged 1.2 million — down from Aces-Liberty last year (1.3M). The full doubleheader averaged 1.85 million, down from last year (2.00M), but up from the first ABC doubleheader two years ago (1.53M).
The numbers mirror the recent NCAA women’s basketball tournament, which declined during the early rounds but remained on the higher end historically.
Elsewhere during the opening week, ION averaged 364,000 for its Opening Night doubleheader last Friday — down 41% from 612,000 last year, when the network carried Bueckers’ pro debut. The early window, which featured Sun-Liberty in most markets and the Toronto Tempo’s inaugural game against the Mystics, averaged 416,000 — down 35% from Lynx-Wings in Buckers’ debut last year (639K).
In the late window, Valkyries-Storm averaged 352,000 — down 39% from Sparks-Valkyries in Golden State’s inaugural game last year (581K).
As for the league’s new broadcast partners, USA Network averaged 529,000 for Aces-Sparks Sunday afternoon. Figures were not immediately available for the network’s Wednesday doubleheader of Fever-Sparks and Aces-Sun. There were no nationally televised games on the equivalent dates last year.
